Dark Manifestations
by Vanille Strawberry
Summary: I taint and I cackle and I make you my prisoner. Do not fight. Embrace. When the person you love most loses control, what can you do? Oneshot.


**Disclaimer: I don't own Avatar.**

A/N: Long time no see!

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-Dark Manifestations-

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I am the night shackling you to your doom. I am the screams slicing through your flesh. I am the sword plunging through your words. I am the poison pumping through your veins. You cannot escape me. No one ever has. I taint and I cackle and I make you my prisoner.

Do not fight.

Embrace.

"No."

Aang looked up suddenly, feeling as though the room had become colder, and he realised his assumptions were in fact correct as a fog of warm breath spiralled from his mouth. His eyes widened in unease and his attention focused solely on the girl who had spoken.

"No. No, no, no, no, no!"

I must admit that living within you has been a pleasure these past few years. It is cold here, icy, barren and harsh. Perfect really for me. I thrive in this climate and repay you with the shivers running along your spine and the angry tears leaking down your tanned cheeks.

You thought you could get rid of me, isn't that right?

"Go away. Go away."

Katara startled him to his feet. Aang tried in vain to move but the earth swallowed his feet and some foreign dark substance resembling tar fastened his arms together. He tried to fight and bend his way out, twisting and writhing in place like some deranged animal, to no avail. He grunted and cried to the water bender sitting hunched in the middle of the floor. So close…

"Katara!"

"Go away."

Oh, delicious. I am growing. Make me stronger. I have grown rather fond of you, you see. You have given me an almost welcoming home and have fed me luscious fears. Keep it coming. Do not turn to look at him. Just go to sleep, let me lull you.

Do not look back.

Aang felt a deep darkness overpower his senses. He could no longer see and a terrible force knocked his bindings and possibly his head clean off. He barrelled into something, it felt like a wall. He grunted in pain, his vision jostling back to its original state.

"What?" he gasped.

Katara had risen to her feet, eyes blank and face troubled, holding a tiny little creature in her arms. Almost like a baby. It released a strange aura and presence, Aang's heart picking up momentum at the sight as though it was aware that its beats were numbered. Katara pinched her eyes shut and he saw a single tear course down her cheek. The room exploded into darkness, but little beacons of light shimmered around Aang's still crumpled form.

_Welcome Avatar._

Aang's eyes settled fearfully on the creature in Katara's trembling arms. It looked as though it were laughing gleefully from its perch.

"What is this? Where am I?" the Avatar demanded propelling himself to his feet, but instantly regretted the action as his side flared with a white-hot intensity.

_You are inside the confines of a turbulent mind, 'O Mighty Avatar. That of your lovely betrothed to be precise. You see the darkness, pulsing, swirling? She is in oblivion._

"Oblivion?" the air bender echoed in a strangled whisper.

_Yes._

Aang let his brow knit in anger and his teeth bared, a ferocious snarl enveloping his body. The creature laughed and it sounded like a cannon, making Katara cringe and hold back a whimper.

"What are you? What do you want with Katara?"

_Disappointing Aang. I thought you would know._

The creature suddenly grew from a baby to a child and Katara set it carefully, almost reverently in the space beside her so that it hovered in mid air to challenge her height. Aang thought incredulously that it looked astonishingly like he had as a young boy.

_I am Katara's hate, her fears, her sorrows. I am the dark part of her heart, the manifestation of that faithful day. The day her mother died._

Katara cried out as though someone has struck her, doubling over herself with a pained howl. The child merely regarded this with a pleasant amusement whilst Aang began to cry out furiously, trying in vain to move but experiencing an obstacle in his muscles as they refused to work.

_You see, Aang,_ the child went on as though it had not been interrupted, _Katara is a feast I could not pass up. She has everything I could want. Spite and sadness. Delicious…_

"I'll kill you!" The Avatar roared wildly.

_Oh?_

The child cackled mysteriously.

_But you cannot, Avatar. If you rid me of Katara then she shall die. I am as much a part of her as her heart is._

"I'll find a way! Katara, listen to me! I'll take care of you for the rest of your life; I'll make it all go away. I promise."

The child let out a deranged howl of mirth, but Katara's eyes widened at the sheer force of the confession. Her lips parted slightly and Aang waited for her to speak over the child's insufferable noise.

"No. Go away."

The dream dissolved. He awoke.

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A/N: Explanation? I feel that Katara still has a lot of unresolved issues. And of course Aang would assume it to be his job to rid her of all her pain. What he doesn't understand is that pain does not disappear and that it is a part of ourselves we must control but not eradicate. In this, Katara has lost control of this pain.

(Hmm?) I think I've just creeped myself out.

Slán,

Vanille


End file.
